Companion code to the article "Scraping Slashdot"

#!/bin/sh

url="http://slashdot.org/index.rss"

if [ $# -eq 1 ] ; then
  headarg=$(( $1 * 2 ))
else
  headarg="-8"	# default is four headlines 
fi

curl --silent "$url" | grep -E '(title>|description>)' | \
  sed -n '4,$p' | \
  sed -e 's/<title>//' -e 's/<\/title>//' -e 's/<description>/   /' \
      -e 's/<\/description>//' | \
  head $headarg | fmt

exit 0

Save this as slash-rss.sh and then you can run it as sh slash-rss.sh or, if you'd prefer, use chmod +x slash-rss.sh then run it as ./slash-rss.sh.

Code inspired by the many scripts included in my popular book Wicked Cool Shell Scripts.